Systemd's Network Support Frustrating Some Users

[Laser]

EricG got it right. This is something that eases stuff for maintainers. This way, you enable systemd's network support and your livecd will most likely boot once if it ships with systemd. Bigger distros will disable it when their focus is elsewhere, but fact is, you sometimes need network when booting. This gives us a simple and unified way to get it, e.g. in a server setup done from a rescue shell.

[Ericg]

What precisely is networkd? Will it (yet again) replace netctl on Arch Linux? Seems like a waste when netctl seems to be designed to fit well with systemd in the first place.

Whether or not it replaces Netctl is up to Arch specifically since netctl was an Arch project, by Arch Developers, for Arch, to replace netctl that Arch used to use.

AFAIK, netctl never really caught on outside of Arch and Arch-derivatives and one-distro projects tend to not survive long. So this COULD be a replacement for netctl, but not necessarily.

[Scimmia]

Whether or not it replaces Netctl is up to Arch specifically since netctl was an Arch project, by Arch Developers, for Arch, to replace netctl that Arch used to use.

AFAIK, netctl never really caught on outside of Arch and Arch-derivatives and one-distro projects tend to not survive long. So this COULD be a replacement for netctl, but not necessarily.

I was assuming that post was aimed at tomegun, who is an Arch Developer.

[prodigy_]

And so systemd continues to befoul the remains of a once great OS...

[computerquip]

And so systemd continues to befoul the remains of a once great OS...

And so trolls continue to spew nonsense with not a single technical or moral reasoning behind it.

[ghexsel]

I understand some of the frustration

I kinda get some of the frustration of not having lots of choices. At the same time, I think, for infrastructure problems that we consider more or less solved (network, sound, video, ), it's nice to see a unified, modern, automagic (no manual config needed) backend. Whether this is the case for systemd or not, we'll see in a couple of years. It certainly worked nicely when the video functionality was centralized at the kernel level... then again, sound is still a mess with Skype regularly having trouble on Ubuntu.

[Ericg]

I was assuming that post was aimed at tomegun, who is an Arch Developer.

Didn't realize Tom was one of the Arch Devs, thanks for pointing it Scimmia

[tomegun]

Didn't realize Tom was one of the Arch Devs, thanks for pointing it Scimmia

I am, but I have nothing to do with netctl, so can't comment on that I'm afraid.

-t

[Nuc!eoN]

The drawback is unpredictable behaviour of your own system

I have no idea why Lennart does this, but in fact starting services by default without being configured is a common approach of systemd since the very beginning, and has already managed to lead me to frustration (because of the resulting problems).
I come from ArchLinux and actually this preconfigured-ness is a no-go, and I have no idea why it has to be forced on us... when I need a service, I simply enable it manually. That's how everything is done in Arch. For other distro's there would be issue in configuring it as default.

The way Systemd goes, lets the system behave different than to be expected and thus creates confusion. Trust me, I have already been confronted with it and it took me several days to figure my issue out (including writing into Arch forums and reporting an issue to the bugtracker), simply becasue I used some alternative piece software and systemd forced some conflicting services on me (without me knowing it and without being able to properly disable it).

See https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56690 and https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=152049

[salsadoom]

This looks like just more pointless systemd hate to me. Its a new system, its a bit different than what we've been using, and people gripe about any change however good it is. "This doesn't work exactly as it did before, wwaaaaah!" its more sad than anything. Linux is is a fast moving system, new stuff gets developed, old stuff gets replaced. You'd think people would be able to deal with learning a few new things now and again.

Networkd seems like it could be useful in some places, so I don't see what the big deal is. I've read a few posts but mainly, I have to say, I see nothing convincing here. Just empty griping and resistance to change. These people probably would probably have been doing the same thing back when libc changed to glibc, and probably any major change since.